Malcolm McDowell

Malcolm McDowell

As the opening event of our tribute to Lindsay Anderson we were very pleased to welcome to the NFT stage Malcolm McDowell, who forged a life-long working relationship and friendship with the internationally-renowned director.

Interviewed Sunday 7 November 2004 by Paul Ryan

Interview © BFI 2004

Slapped into movie stardom

Introduction: ... On behalf of the BFI I'd like to welcome you to the National Film Theatre. Tonight marks the start of our Lindsay Anderson retrospective, and also the publication of our bfi Film Classics on the film If.... [Lindsay Anderson, 1968] and I can't think of any better way to start this retrospective off than having Malcolm McDowell on stage at last at the NFT, in conversation with Paul Ryan, whose book on the collected writings of Lindsay Anderson has just been published. Both of these books are available in the foyer for sale. Before we start the show proper, let's have a quick look at a clip from If....

[Clip: If....]

[applause]

Paul Ryan: Good evening. What a popular man. Welcome to this special event, which is the launch of a season of films by Lindsay Anderson. We're showing all the feature films that he made - all the theatrical features he made, so you can see everything from This Sporting Life [1963] through to The Whales of August [1987]. And included in that, of course, is a trilogy of films he made with and starring Malcolm, as Mick Travis who... changed a lot over the period that he appeared on screen.

Malcolm McDowell: He wasn't the same character.

PR: No, it was deliberately not the same character, was it?

MM: Not deliberately. The fact is that David Sherwin, who's a very talented writer, couldn't write for me in any other name, so... when we were doing O Lucky Man! [1973], the name that I'd given myself was Gordon Crosswaite, after a boy that I knew at school, but it was a silly name really. Anyway, David came one day and it was Mick Travis again. I said 'what the hell is this? This old If.... stuff regurgitated?' He said 'no, no, I can't write for you by calling you anything but Mick.' I said 'fine with me, that's great, okay.' So that's another little confusion that Lindsay loved, because after all he was an anarchist.

PR: Yes... that's also blown the PhD thesis I was going to write on the evolution of Mick Travis in the cinema. [laughter] But never mind.

MM: Well a lot of those we can shoot holes in tonight.

PR: Only too true. But there's a deliberate reason for us shooting this clip tonight, this particular clip of the café scene - for two reasons. Malcolm has done a one-man show, called Lindsay Anderson: A Personal Remembrance, which many of you may have seen, but I'm sure a great number of you haven't yet seen. I'm sure you'll get a chance sometime in the future to see that... and in that show, Malcolm, you talked about Lindsay saying to you that the first image he gave you from If.... was this sequence on the motorbike.

MM: Yes, with Christine, like this. That was the very first image that he gave me of the film. It's particularly nice though to see this because we just learned that Christine had passed away last year, and it's really wonderful that her family have come tonight, and her daughter - I was absolutely shocked because... the spitting image of Christine as I knew her. She was a very remarkable actress that, of course the British film industry didn't know what the hell to do with, which goes for a lot of them. But she was very talented, as you can see from the scene. It was revolutionary in its day. It's still pretty hot right now actually. I don't think there'd ever been a man and a woman on the screen together, naked, before this, and the first assistant director, a man called John Stoneman, who has since gone into obscurity, thank God, he actually walked off the film, because we did it naked. He thought that was really poor taste, and he went off to produce films in Canada, which is, I guess, where they all end up. [laughter]

PR: But also, that café scene, Malcolm, was your audition scene, wasn't it? You and Christine, you did that audition at the Shaftesbury Theatre...

MM: It was, and - I've told the story a lot - but in case anybody hasn't heard it when I went in - this is the second audition for me, for this film, and I didn't really know much about it. I didn't know that it was a public school, for instance. Neither did my agent. Nobody had really read the script - I certainly hadn't read it. When I arrived there I was given a copy of this scene, three or four sheets of paper to quickly scan over, which I did. I was nervous about the audition and all that, so nothing went in. I was more interested in... it was shot at a theatre that was dark until the evening performance of Jimmy Edwards' Comedy Hour. [laughter] And I know it had a revolving stage and lots of funny props, which intrigued me somewhat, and I was looking at the props, and Lindsay said 'right, let's start,' and Christine came in and I said 'I'm sorry, I don't have a script.' He said 'why not?' I said 'well, I don't know, I didn't get one,' and he said 'oh, for God's sake, somebody give him a script,' which David Sherwin gave me his. I read the script, I was doing fine until it said 'Mick grabs hold of girl and kisses her passionately,' which I did, of course. Apparently I pulled her right across a table that we were using as the coffee bar counter. And I remember I had to pull her right across and... of course I didn't read the next line, which was 'girl rears up and slaps Mick viciously on the head.' I don't know whether she slapped me, David Sherwin says that she punched me. [laughter] I never saw it coming. All I did was... it dropped me on the floor, and my eyes started tearing. I don't like to say I burst into tears... [laughter] My eyes were tearing, I was in utter shock, and my ears were throbbing like this, and... I couldn't believe what had happened to me. It was like... So Christine Noonan slapped me into reality and movie stardom. That's what I always say and, honestly, without that, who knows? I probably wouldn't have got the part, I don't know.

But of course, after that it was electric and I chased around the stage... stalked her, and the whole thing became this very animalistic, wonderful scene, and the atmosphere was very charged. And I knew I'd got the part. I thought if they give it to Michael York after this... [laughter] there's no fucking justice in the world. [laughter] Because he'd got all the other parts that I was up for, it was either me or him and he always got it. Thank God! Because you don't remember those films, but this one... [laughter] I think honestly this is the best film that I was ever in, or associated with, and I say that because, from every department it's absolutely brilliant. From the script... also the timing of the film was so incredible because it came out right at the time of the great demonstrations in France, the Sorbonne, and the whole anti-Vietnamese War thing. It was very timely. Every department... it was Miroslav Ondrícek, who was the photographer... it was just at the beginning of his brilliant career. He went on to do all Milos Forman's films in America - Amadeus [1984] and all those films - and he is a great artist... Lindsay had first worked with him on a short film that he did, a 50-minute film, The White Bus [1967], which in a weird way became the test bed for O Lucky Man!, in terms of its epic quality, the use of black and white and colour and all that, that's more If.... actually, but it's very much in that vein, of O Lucky Man! But... anyway it's a great scene, this, and... so after we'd done the naked bit I remember standing up and... it was a real café off the A5, and there were these windows all down one side, and there was a lorry with a trailer on the back and like fifteen or twenty guys standing there, looking in, and as I looked up they went... [laughter] Christine thought that I was like... she thought I was a schoolboy, I think, desperately trying to impress her, but it didn't work at all.

Anderson's early films

PR: I should say, incidentally, that The White Bus is one of the films that's showing I in our season, so you can get a chance to see that.

MM: Are you showing them all?

PR: We're showing all the theatrical features, and then we've got an evening which is short films, so we've got four short films including The White Bus and The Singing Lesson [Raz dwa trzy..., 1967].

MM: It's well worth seeing. Lindsay's short films are gems. I mean they really are. The Singing Lesson, the one he did in Poland, is fantastic. Every Day except Christmas [1957] - a beautiful film too. He was from documentaries, that's where he started, and in fact Lois Smith is here tonight, and Lois was the first person to offer Lindsay a film to direct, and... do you want to tell the story?

PR: Yes... well I'll tell the story as far as I can. It was that Lindsay and Lois had met through the film societies, and Lindsay was part of...

MM: At Oxford...

PR: Yes, exactly, at Oxford. Lindsay was part of the Oxford Film Society, Lois was part of the Wakefield Film Society, and film societies in those days were the ways of getting to see current classic films, or classic films to be as they became. And so they met up at Oxford. Then when Lois was back in Wakefield, her husband's company, which was called Richard Sutcliffe, which made...

MM: Sootcliffe's!

PR: Well you're from the north, you can do that... Sutcliffe's were making conveyor belts. Richard Sutcliffe wanted to have a special way of promoting their product, and they wanted to do it through a film - these days I suppose people do it through a video - and Lois said 'I know exactly the person to make the film,' and so she went down to visit Lindsay at his mother's house in Camberly - and I think it was snowing - and she knocked on the door, and Lindsay's mother opened the door...

MM: Snowing! You don't have to get that detailed! [laughter]

PR: And...

MM: But what did his mother think she was?

PR: She thought she was some woman of some ill...

MM: A prostitute...

PR: That Lindsay had got up the duff.

MM: That would be more the thing I would head towards... [laughter] Forget about the snow... Here comes this hooker!

PR: Next time you have to fill something in, Malcolm will be telling the story, ladies and gentlemen...

Starting If....

PR: But Malcolm, what you were doing in If.... I know there were certain things that you had to do because... you were filming actually at Cheltenham College, which was Lindsay's old school.

MM: Yes, some of it.

PR: And David Ashcroft, the then headmaster had seen the script, and approved the script, but he hadn't seen the script, had he, really?

MM: Well he'd seen a version of the script, something that Lindsay had cooked up with David and probably Michael Medwin - he's also here, he's also guilty of this - they sleight of handed him, of course, a script that obviously didn't have a revolution at the end of it with the boys shooting the parents as they came out of Speech Day! I think that was a no-brainer - we wanted to use it, and the film was made for £250,000 or thereabouts, maybe a little bit more, but certainly not much more. I suppose that today would be maybe a $3 million film, I don't know. Anyway I know I was paid £90 a week, but I would have paid them of course, but... no, the headmaster thought it was all 'frightfully good fun,' and we could 'use the boys, whenever you want...' [laughter] so we did, and that saved a lot of money.

The thing that really Lindsay was very worried about was putting me into a group with the real schoolboys, because, after all, I certainly wasn't a schoolboy, I was 24! And, although when I look at the thing I look very young... the Beatles have a lot to answer for, with those haircuts... anyway, he was very worried that the shots in the chapel, where I was inserted, with the other three, with David and Richard Warwick, David Wood's here too, somewhere, it's been nice to see him. Anyway he was really worried that we'd stand out as being obviously actors, but I know by his diary that he was very happy that we didn't stand out at all. We completely merged in with the real thing, and the boys were very nice actually. In fact the whole thing was a wonderful experience up there in Cheltenham. And Miroslav made it look so extraordinary and poetic. And in fact I think anyone seeing that film would really die to go to a school like that - I would, I know. My school was... not quite so nice as that, even though... in fact the more minor the public school, the worse they are of course, that seems to be the... that's what it was like then, in those days. Of course I know they're all so liberal now, aren't they?

PR: Well I don't know, I've never been to a public school...

MM: No, I've no interest either, but anyway...

PR: But did you draw on any of your own school experiences?

MM: Well of course. I wasn't an actor really. This was my first film, I was reacting... I had no clue, even though I'd been an actor for four years or whatever, but it was the first film... and I remember... Lindsay was very protective and very sweet to me. He was very... he would just say 'you just react normally, Malcolm, you don't have to do any acting at all,' which was sort of a bit of a shame, because I was dying to do a bit of acting... and in fact I saw Laurence Olivier doing something... Dance of Deathor something... no, it was Long Day's Journey into Night, where he suddenly, in the middle of a scene, did this fantastic crossing of his legs, and I was very impressed. It got a round of applause... and so of course I go in the next day and, in the middle of this scene, I suddenly went like this... and Lindsay went 'what on earth are you doing?' [laughter] I said 'I just saw Olivier do...' He went 'for God's sake, Malcolm, cut that out! That's ridiculous!' I said 'well, I've got another trick too...' He said 'oh, don't!' I said 'yes, this is to make people really listen... you must start talking so lowly they all have to lean forward, you see... THEN YOU SUDDENLY...' He went 'that is dreadful!' He said 'I suppose you picked those bad habits up at the Royal Shakespeare Company.' I said 'well actually, as a matter of fact I did, yes. Eric Porter showed me how to do that.' He said 'dreadful.' So there were no tricks with Lindsay, you had to be totally truthful. You could chew scenery, as long as you did it truthfully.

Anderson's gift for direction

PR: But you spoke the other day of Lindsay's gift for direction and the simplicity of his direction as well, and you spoke in your one-man show about the beating scene with Rowntree - Robert Swann, when he beats you, and the direction that Lindsay gave you before you turned around. Maybe you'd like to...

MM: The real piece of direction I remember that he gave me, where it was obvious - 'I would like you to do this' - and he never said that, hardly ever, because he'd always wait to see what you did, and he would usually love that and go with that, but he was very... there was a marvellous moment. There are certain things that Lindsay Anderson does which I still do as an actor - I put them in as my little homage to him, and I don't care whether the character would do it or not because I don't work that way, but I do it because I'm passing it down and I'm passing it on, and there are certain things that I do. A screen kiss, for instance, Lindsay taught me how to do, and... do we have anyone here... no, I'm kidding. [laughter] I'll stand up... I can't stand up because the mic... I'll talk loud... so, a screen kiss, instead of just going in like this... which is... one would obviously do... the Lindsay Anderson technique is: look at your partner; in; out; mark it; look; see the love and understanding in the eyes [laughter]; and then go in for the kiss. So it's not all rushed and out of focus, he loved simplicity but he loved it in focus. And just that little thing makes it what he would call 'it takes it from the mini to the epic.' I know it sounds weird, but it's true. Coming through a door, you would hold the door frame, so you frame your body, instead of just walking through the damned door, coming in like this, holding it like this, and then coming through and letting the arm trail as you go through. A very simple thing, but however it's very effective and it makes it, elevates it. And he was brilliant at doing that.

Anyway I'll go back to this thing of the beating scene. He wanted me to... so I'm beaten, I get twelve strokes of the thing and... you'll see it later, I suppose, and this is what he asked me to do, it's very subtle, very simple. So the camera's where you are... I'm bending over, I stand up, I'm obviously distraught... just that one little movement, like this... it tells everything, it tells the audience, before I look round, to anticipate what I am feeling, and it's just a way of giving the scene a style, and it takes it out of it being realistic, into being epic I suppose. And just these little things really were very important, and it just elevates it. Instead of it being realistic. I think I only ever did one realistic thing in my life, which I really enjoyed but I never got a chance to do it again, and that was the third film I made, called The Raging Moon [1971]. Bryan Forbes. I never got to do it again, but I did enjoy it while it lasted - six weeks, that was about it.

PR: You worked with Lindsay also in the theatre, you did In Celebration for him in New York, you did Holiday at the Old Vic, among other things, and he 'tweaked' productions as well, didn't he? Was he very different, working in the theatre?

MM: Of course it's different. He was a brilliant theatre director. I know I'm going on about how brilliant he was - he was. It was more of course as a director and as a person, you knew him better as a person through his films, which were very personal. Even though they were written by somebody else, Lindsay, with the heavy hand of God, was over every scene, every moment, every frame. His stage work consisted largely, from the 70s on, of an incredible co-operation with David Storey. He did nine David Storey plays and they were some of the most extraordinary productions of that era, and I don't know whether you remember, but there was Home, with Gielgud and Richardson and Dandy Nichols and Mona Washbourn and Warren Clark and that's absolutely one of the most spectacular productions I ever saw, but also The Contractor, which... he had to direct this marquee going up at the end of the first act and then them dismantling it all, and it was just brilliantly done, an incredible piece of direction - and writing of course. He loved David Storey's work, and he thought David was remarkable. Of course he wasn't popular like Alan Ayckbourn, which really pissed Lindsay off. He used to sneer at the others, the Harold Pinters and all that, because they weren't poets, and he thought they were absolutely pretentious and hadn't written anything good in a few years, and of course I happen to agree with that, but that's neither here nor there. He also did The Changing Room and... there's nine of them, they're all brilliant. They're all very different.

PR: I'm wondering, going back to If.... for a moment, if he used any kind of techniques, because Lindsay was new to you at that point. You came to know him extremely well and, as you've said, the master-pupil relationship moved and evolved into a deep friendship and a true collaboration as colleagues and equals. But when you were first working with him on If...., did he employ any kind of techniques to keep, for example, because of the strange hierarchy that there is in the public school, whether he used some kind of technique to keep you and David Wood and Richard Warwick as a kind of team together, separate from anybody else?

MM: Why, have you heard a story that he did?

PR: No, I just wondered if he had.

MM: He didn't have to, actually, because we did it ourselves. I mean who wants to hang out with the guy playing such a creep. We were into... we were so young... I didn't have the technique to be able to separate performance - the playing of the character... to me, I had to live with it and I couldn't divorce that and I was terrified to come away from it because that was the only way I could do it at that time. I really didn't understand what film was, I was still trying to formulate, I suppose, a technique of film acting. Lindsay was helping me enormously just by telling me what was working and what wasn't. I think that... I do remember though, the very first thing that we shot. My first shot was... a swordfight that we have in the squash court, it starts off in the gymnasium and ends up in the squash court, and at the end of it, actually, it's a wonderful moment, it's where Mick... it's where the film changes, fundamentally changes into the fantasy element, and Mick is cut on the hand and lifts his hand up, and says 'blood... real blood,' like it's something extraordinary, and the music changes - a beautiful music cue there, and it takes the film into another area.

Now when I shot this, the next day when we saw the dailies of it, the rushes, I was horrified because I was reacting as one would with a sword in one's hand, being whacked by two other boys, and my facial gestures were so over-the-top, they leapt out of the screen, and it was really over-the-top, and I was sitting next to Lindsay, and I said 'we've got to shoot that again, Linds, I didn't realise... you didn't tell me...' sort of blaming him... '... what to do, you didn't tell me that...' and he said 'for God's sake calm down, it's fine, but just take this as a good lesson... you have to be aware of your facial muscles every single moment you're on the camera. Of course you do. Even if you're doing this, you've got to control it, and it can't just be realistic, you've got to really watch what you're doing.' And that was such a great lesson that I learned, and that was the very first day of shooting. David Wood, Richard Warwick and I, I think, hung out mostly, we'd always eat our meals together, because we were the rebels and we weren't going to eat with the prefects. It just stood for to reason.

PR: So it naturally happened for you.

MM: Yes.

The genesis of O Lucky Man!

MM: What was nice for me was getting to know Arthur Lowe a bit, and Graham Crowden. Graham Crowden was a wonderful - and is - a wonderful actor, and his scene in the film is absolutely brilliant, I think.

PR: He plays the history master in the...

MM: He plays the history master. Yes, he has one of the great lines, I think, when... he says something like 'George the Third was known as a mollusc king... said by whom... Travis?' and I go 'Plumb, J.H. Plumb?' And the camera comes back to him and he goes '... possibly.' [laughter] That's brilliant writing. It's brilliant writing, but Graham... he's a great actor.

PR: He is a wonderful actor. Graham was going to be with us this evening, but he said he's 82 years old and he has to keep his face out there, and he's actually working. He's in Manchester, recording, but you'll get a chance to see Graham at his best in all the trilogy, he's throughout the trilogy, and particularly in Britannia Hospital [1982], where he goes absolutely crazy...

MM: He's the sort of leading character...

PR: He is the leading character in Britannia Hospital. We've discussed the fact that Mick does not evolve, Mick is simply the character that David wrote for you. When you came to do O Lucky Man!, really, If.... was David's idea, really. David and John Howlett had long nursed this script originally called Crusaders and it was Daphne Hunter, Michael Medwin's secretary, who came up with the name If.... as the title for the film.

MM: She's still waiting for her cheque!

PR: I'm sure she is. But when it came to O Lucky Man!, that really was your idea wasn't it? I mean that came from your own experience.

MM: It was. It was. I was naïve enough to think that because If.... was a big hit and successful and all that, that Lindsay would want to work with me again. I put my arm round him, which he didn't like much, but anyway, he suffered it and we were walking down the Croisette in Cannes at the festival and I remember saying 'you know, Lindsay, we're such a big success, how about doing another film together?' And he stopped, his eyes rolled and he looked down that Roman nose of his and he said 'what do you think Malcolm? That good scripts fall from the trees like leaves?' [laughter] 'You know, if you want to work with me again, then you bloody well better had write it.' I mean, I was a young actor you know, obviously he thought that that was the end of that. And he walked off, and I said, 'I will then. I will write it, I'm going to write it.' And I had this idea, about doing a film about my experiences as a coffee salesman in Yorkshire. I only did it for nine months and I had a lot of extraordinary experiences. And I thought I'd write them down, which I did. I wrote them down, I got 40 pages of escapades of Mick Travis or Gordon Crosswaite, whatever the hell I called him.

I took them over to show Lindsay and he sighed and groaned and started to read them, and he said 'is this supposed to be a comedy?' I said 'well, yes, of course it's funny, I mean, you don't know because you're from the South. I'm from the North, you know, I have a sense of humour.' He said 'actually, I'm a Scot, Malcolm.' I went 'oh, yeah, right, right, you've never been to Scotland though.' So I teased him about that. But anyway, he read it and he said 'it's not really very good, is it?' I said 'it's fucking good. It's your next film, and I think it's going to be brilliant.' He said 'well, you'd better call David Sherwin.' So I did. I got hold of David, I showed it to him and he, when he read the 40 pages, he loved it. He could see it immediately. He said 'oh it's much better than the one I'm writing, let's do it together.' So we started doing it together and we carried on with that until I had to go off to work with Stanley Kubrick on AClockworkOrange [1971].

So I think I had maybe six months or something working with David. It was rather relaxed, you know, we'd go to a coffee bar or the pub and talk about the scene and I'd say 'take this down David, you're the writer - have you got a pen?' And all that kind of stuff. And then we'd ogle girls in miniskirts going by... 'aww... wow... er where are we? Oh yeah, okay, let's take that and show Lindsay, he would go...' We soon found that it was a mistake for both of us to go and meet with Lindsay about the script at the same time, because he figured that was ganging up, and that was not going to work. Just the egos involved... there's no way. He immediately got defensive and ripped it up. That was it. And I really figured that out very fast. So we'd do stuff and I'd say 'David, you're going to present this one. And I'll present that scene, I think he'll like that from me, that's a good one.'

And that's the way we did it. And he'd say... for instance, I wrote a scene about the character Mick. He goes to... actually it was the English Electric plant, they were actually selling... making rocket engines. I didn't know this, I just thought... it had on my card from my predecessor, 'English Electric, Catering Manageress, Mrs Williams,' so of course I go to this... I find this factory way out somewhere, and I went past, it had this gatehouse with all this... MPs or something...an electric gate thing, I thought, 'that's weird.' Anyway, I drove past it slowly, looking at it, thinking, 'that's where I've got to go.' I stopped, and I was just leaning on the car door filling in my sales reports for the morning, when the door was yanked open and I fell out, into the gutter really. It was these two MPs who marched me back to this gatehouse. And I said 'I haven't... you're making a mistake... here's my card, I'm from Standard Brands, I'm selling Chase & Sanborn coffee actually, would you like a sample?' 'No, no we don't. Exactly who have you come to see?' 'Oh, well, I'm here to see Mrs Williams, the Catering Manageress.' 'Nobody here called Williams.' 'Oh, well it's a mistake... must be here, because my predecessor... and she bought two bags of... two cartons of coffee on the' ...whatever the date was. I had it all written down, you see. Anyway, they gave me a real hassle time and eventually let me through, and I got to meet her and I sold the thing. So Lindsay turned this into a total torture scene, where I am taken in, wired down, and electric torture is sent through my thingummy and they start talking in Russian. And I'm going, 'I'm just selling coffee, for God's sake.' And then suddenly Dandy Nichols comes in with the tea trolley and goes 'cup of tea?' [laughter] 'Two sugars isn't it? Yeah, there you are. And what about the young man, does he want a cup? Alright.' And off she goes, then suddenly there's a big thing, and then the end of the world comes and there's explosions... and the whole thing and that's Lindsay pushing it to the... you know. And I'm going, 'well that's so much better that what I had.'

Another one, I think that this was a precursor to the hospital stuff - Miller Clinic - is that I had it written on my card some hospital, and I thought 'oh yes,' and there's... the catering manager was 'Mr Smith' or whatever, so I drove in and it was a really long drive into a sort of palatial manor house that... East Riding had taken over this place. I drove down and I saw a gardener working with a hoe in the rose garden, and I thought I'd better stop and check whether this is really the right place, and I started to walk towards him. He suddenly turned round with this hoe - he had the weirdest look on his face - and started coming at me with this hoe. And I went... literally ran back to the car, jumped in and shot off, and of course it was a mental institution. [laughter] So there you go, I had a lot of fun really.

PR: And how long did you do that job?

MM: Nine months.

PR: My God.

MM: That's all it took.

Price and Anderson in O Lucky Man!

PR: And whose idea was it to bring the music into O Lucky Man!, to bring Alan Price...

MM: That was Lindsay's, because he'd been doing a documentary about Alan Price - on Alan Price I think - and he really loved his music, and he liked Alan very much. They were great friends. I know that he had David Sherwin go along with Alan, gigging, doing one-night stands up in the north-east, and David asking 'what would you say if...' and stuff like that, and Alan would say 'I don't know, aggravate the gravel,' or something - for 'let's get on with it,' and David would write that down: 'aggravate the gravel, that's good, that's good, that's good,' and stuff like that. Alan was fantastic and the songs are beautifully realised in that film. I think when we got stuck on the scene sequence, that Lindsay would give him and say 'now, here, write a song,' so that's basically what it was like, and he wrote some incredible music - fabulous.

PR: It's an extraordinary film, and the music - I think you're quite right - it stands up completely now as absolutely wonderful. I remember that Lindsay said 'who else could have done that, maybe John Lennon...' but John Lennon he thought was at one time too bitter and too sentimental, whereas Alan was ironical and lyrical.

MM: I don't know about that...

PR: Well you're from Liverpool...

MM: He would be too expensive anyway, put it that way.

PR: Quite. But again, we talked about the slap that Christine gave you, which slapped you into your film career. That had a kind of echo in O Lucky Man!, didn't it, with the last sequence.

MM: I kept saying to Lindsay 'how do I finish this bloody film?' He goes 'what happened to you, Malcolm?' I said 'I became a movie star, I suppose.' He said 'exactly. And... write that down,' and so I thought about... I hadn't thought about it for ages, about this audition, which I've explained to you, about this slap and all that, and so that became part of the climax, the most important scene in the film - with the director, played by Lindsay, of course. We tried to get Miriam Brickman to play the casting director and she refused. He just could not understand... that was... Michael, wasn't it true, Michael, right? She didn't want to appear on camera, for some reason, I don't know. I don't think she was well at the time, actually, is the truth. But anyway, he tried to get her... so we got 'Fizz' instead - Eleanor Fazan, who's another great friend of Lindsay's and a choreographer, and she helped with the movement at the end - of the big dance stuff - that was all Fizz.

Of course he was very nervous, the day he was shooting that. Of course he was acting, and he wasn't quite so sure of himself. I felt it was my one chance to give him a little bit back, what I've had to suffer through two films. So I would say stuff like 'are you going to wardrobe?' He'd say 'what do you mean?' and... 'this is my wardrobe...' I'd say 'are you wearing that? You're not wearing that, surely?' He'd say 'what do you mean, of course I'm wearing it, I always wear this.' I'd say 'yes, but aren't you... I thought you were playing a part - of another director.' He'd say 'no, Malcolm, I'm wearing my black leather jacket and my red shirt,' because that was what he wore every day, that I pretty much remember. And then I'd say 'well you'd better go to make-up.' He said 'I've been to make-up.' 'Oh, oh, okay...' The big wind-up from me, and it was just nice to tease him a little bit, but he was actually really good in the film. He gives a wonderful performance as the director, because it is Lindsay, but it isn't, and that's what is really amazing about it, and of course he... when you read the diaries of what he thought about it, he says 'was I good? I think okay... I think I was good, yes. Malcolm, however, wore too much make-up, and didn't play out of desperation.'

So I got it in the neck, I never heard of this when I was there. And then we reshot the damned thing 50 times because he was acting in it, and he couldn't really have any distance on it, so he didn't know that he had this slap that... he hit me 35 times, and he had Michael Medwin telling me jokes behind the camera, trying to make me smile the smile of understanding. Well if you're hit with a 135-page script you do not grin like an idiot. It takes a while to register, and actually we used the third take, that's the truth, and it's a very interesting look, that shot is an amazing shot because it's a very enigmatic sort of... I'm desperately trying to do what the scriptwriter wanted, which was smile the smile of understanding, but I couldn't. And I suppose there is no smile of understanding, really.

PR: I don't know, we'll have to work on it.

MM: The thing is that it's... it was sort of perfect the way it was and I couldn't do it any other way, and I took a beating for it.

PR: So basically he was trying to get that smile and then he found that he had it all along, third take in.

MM: Yes, but that often happens, you know, and you can't blame the director for that, especially a director who's acting in the scene. And of course he was in the scene, as an actor. He wasn't looking at me really at all, except probably that I had too much make-up on, I don't know!

Britannia Hospital and Eric Morecambe

PR: I want to see another clip now, we're going to take our second clip which is a clip from Britannia Hospital, which had a kind of unfortunate career...

MM: We haven't talked about that, have we?

PR: No we haven't, we're about to. So you get to see Graham Crowden being marvellous with Jill Bennett, coming into a scene with Malcolm, so we'll have that clip now, of Britannia Hospital.

MM: Shall we move?

PR: I don't know, I think they can probably see it over you.

MM: Okay.

[Clip: Britannia Hospital]

[applause]

PR: It's interesting in that, Malcolm, the dialogue has an echo of O Lucky Man!, he talks about what's luck got to do with it, and you've got to sell... you've got to find something to sell, which is one of Alan's songs is 'Sell, Sell, Sell' in O Lucky Man!, but the character in this, I remember asking Lindsay about the character you played in this and he said 'he's a complete shit really...'

MM: He was.

PR: There's no saving him at all.

MM: No, no. well that's why he was ripped apart, he had his head ripped off by Graham Crowden. I often asked Lindsay 'what do you think would happen to Mick after If...., say?' and he said ' I don't know, Malcolm, he probably would have ended up a bank manager in South America or something...' and, I don't know, who knows, but we're so different aren't we, when we're that age, so many experiences through life and in fact, looking at that, I stuck a lot of dialogue in, saying I was in Arkansas and that was because my ex-wife was from Arkansas so of course I stuck all the things that I knew in there, and that's the nice thing about... there's lots of in things. When you see them all these years later, you realise... But that's the great thing about film - is use what you know, use what's part of you, that's the great thing about... the difference, really, about film acting, if you like, is that you always try and use as much as you possibly can of yourself, because the camera really sees into your soul, so any lies will be picked up at 30 feet.

PR: Well I know that you've spoken in the past of your admiration for screen actors like James Cagney, and David Sherwin, when he has written about you, has written about your James Cagney smile, and there's certainly a tremendous correspondence between what you do on film and what Cagney does on film.

MM: In the very English way.

PR: No, I don't know about in the very English way. I don't think so, no, I think it's very... I don't think you're afraid of going over the top. You're just prepared to allow the screen to continue...

MM: How are we going to take that remark? [laughter]

PR: As nicely as you possibly can.

MM: Are you saying I'm brave with my material?

PR: I'm saying you're brave with your material. That's exactly what I'm saying. [laughter]

MM: I'll accept that.

PR: You put things so well... but I was astonished to read today in The Observer of your admiration for another great screen actor, Eric Morecambe.

MM: Yes, oh Eric Morecambe... brilliant! He... I crib from him all the time, especially in A Clockwork Orange... [laughter]

PR: How?

MM: Well, there's a scene in A Clockwork Orange where I'm eating spaghetti, and they've found out that I was the one who went to the writer's house and raped his wife, which ended up in her committing suicide, so I'm responsible for her death, and also responsible for him being in a wheelchair, played by Patrick Magee - and he's brilliant - but I'm at a table, sitting there, and he comes in, and he's carried in - he's in a wheelchair, but he's carried in - by the guy that played Darth Vadar, Derek Prowse, right? Before he was Darth Vadar...

PR: David Prowse...

MM: Not Derek, that's somebody else entirely. Okay David Prowse... So David Prowse - he had a lovely Westcountry accent, that Stanley kept saying 'what is he saying?' 'He talks like that, you know, a bit like that...' Anyway... and he puts Patrick down and I'm eating spaghetti, and he goes 'food alright? Try the wine!' [laughter] and I'm going 'yes, thank you very much, sir, yes' and doing all that banter like Eric Morecambe used to do, and of course I'm using it in the context of this character, but it was absolutely cribbed from them. But then that's where actors get their inspiration, if you like, sometimes, or it could be... I don't know, anybody. But I was always a great fan of Eric Morecambe. His delivery was second to none. He was brilliant, I thought. If you can crib, crib from the best.

PR: Yes, that's true.

Bad timing?

But going back briefly to Britannia Hospital, that was a film which had a... when If.... came out it was very fortuitous because it came out at the time of the student revolts in 1968, and you've spoken of Lindsay's delight at finding a newspaper with the students on the roof of the Sorbonne in Paris, with guns and such, and looking just like a still from the film. But in the case of Britannia Hospital, that came out right at the height of the Falklands conflict, and it was quite the opposite effect in other words.

MM: Yes, yes. Unfortunately the film was an absolute disaster beyond belief, because it was jingoistic England, the Falklands and all that... here comes this antiestablishment film, which is taking a swipe at every institution we hold dear, even the Queen Mother gets it, I think. And of course they thought it was disgusting. In fact I think they booed. The English critics at Cannes booed the film and walked out, which I said to Lindsay 'that's fantastic! Wow! We must have made something right.' Of course he was devastated and it... I think it's a really wonderful film actually and I think only in retrospect can you really see what the film is and now's a good time as any, but it was just unfortunate that there we were, it was a different world. Maggie Thatcher's world, we lived in, and a pretty hideous world it was - to some, and Lindsay really went for that... the craziness that was going on - the strikes, the... it was just mad really.

And it was happening here and Lindsay's one of the very few directors that actually did a film about modern-day Britain... unless you consider Notting Hill [Roger Michell, 1999] a film about modern-day Britain. But it's extraordinary there are so few. Alright, Ken Loach does them and there are a few others, but very few. But nobody with Lindsay's satirical style and his poetic style, and I think, honestly, the films that he made - those three films anyway, but all of them - This Sporting Life is an amazing film and stands up today because it was a classic, and you can see it today, except for the cars in it, it hasn't dated at all. And neither has If.... and O Lucky Man! I don't think has either, frankly, I think it's even better. I saw it for the first time in 20-odd years, two years ago they had a retrospective of mine at the Lincoln Center and I saw it, and they'd made a new print and I was absolutely blown away. I thought it was fantastic. And especially seeing... because of all the time that's gone by since I made it, really seeing what Lindsay's... what he did - it was quite extraordinary really. I was just the actor, I'm just the pawn.

PR: Well you weren't just the actor, and it's true, that film came out of... began with you. And I think maybe that's one of the things that was hard for Lindsay because BritanniaHospital... whereas If.... had come from David and...

MM: You know that's a mistake, I think that's a mistake, I think that's put around by David.

PR: Really?

MM: He always likes to think that If.... was his, O Lucky Man! was mine and Lindsay got the shaft by getting the one that nobody ever saw. But that's bollocks actually, if you don't mind me saying.

PR: I don't mind at all.

MM: Oh, okay. The truth is they all had the heavy hand of God on them. I knew when I wrote this 40 pages of... called The Coffee Man that it was a stepping stone to hook him into committing to making a film about this subject. But I knew that this subject was mini and I knew that it would never be a little comedy, an English comedy. I knew that I had to hook him and get him involved so that he would commit to doing another project. And look, it took five years. It wasn't like it happened overnight. And we went through so many... I used to get cards from Lindsay when I was doing A Clockwork Orange actually. It would say in his red felt tip pen, it would say 'Dear Malcolm, Disaster. Screenwriter drunk on the floor. No progress. Better cancel the film! Love, L.' and I'd think 'Oh God' and then two days later 'Things are going well at last. David seems to really have turned over a new leaf. Progress being made. L.' And stuff like that, I've got loads of those. That's the way he did it. Look, he had us around, he used to absolutely whip and beat poor old David, but David responded to that. That was their... that's the way they worked.

He couldn't work with a professional Hollywood screenwriter, God forbid. I mean I wish he had sometimes, would have saved an awful lot of time and emotional beatings up. I mean, I've seen him whip poor David and give him lashings of sarcasm and shouting at him and stuff. And him just sitting there like... I mean it was water off a duck's back actually, the truth is - and thank God - because he knew he'd have to get it out and then off they'd go, he'd write another thing. He'd go 'You call this a scene? I mean, look at this, it's a disgrace, a total disgrace. David, you've been in there for three hours and you've come out with one line. What's the explanation?' 'I couldn't really think.' 'Couldn't think. My God, have you got any brain at all?' This is how it would go. Then David would say 'Well I think the one line's very good.' [laughter] And I'd say 'Well what is it?' And he'd go 'Try not to die like a dog.' And I'd say 'It is good. That's a great line. It only took him three hours, Lindsay.' [laughter] 'Get back in there.'

Gangsters and poets

PR: I want to turn the questioning over to you in just a moment, but before I do that, I once asked Lindsay about the qualities that he liked in Malcolm as an actor and he said above all in Malcolm there's a great sense of danger. He said you have that on the stage and you have it on the screen also. He said he had a real sense of danger which you can't fake. So we have two examples of this for you. One - to show that the sense of danger is not diminished - is from Gangster No.1 by Paul McGuigan [2000], a scene with David Thewlis. And that's followed immediately by a clip from a little film that Malcolm made a few years ago with a man called Stanley Kubrick. It's called A Clockwork Orange. So we'll take those two clips now.

MM: We're showing the charming side, right?

PR: Oh absolutely, the charming side. [laughter]

[Clips: Gangster No.1 and A Clockwork Orange]

PR: And you really did improvise that, didn't you?

MM: Yes, I did.

PR: What a brain.

MM: I did, it's the only improvised scene in the movie actually... because he'd... I don't know how many takes he'd done of this scene... this poor woman wheeling this thing around... and after 30 takes I said 'Look, Stanley, it's all... I can't make it sound spontaneous anymore. Can I just say the first thing that comes into my head?' And he said 'Oh, okay, give it a try.' And that's what happened. And he was 'great, we'll use that.'

[Tape turns over...]

PR: ...open it up to you, do you have a question at all for Malcolm? I have one right at the back.

Audience member: Looking back on A Clockwork Orange now, what are your thoughts on the film?

PR: If you didn't hear that from the back, the question is what Malcolm's thoughts are looking back now on A Clockwork Orange.

MM: Well, I always thought that it was this terrific black comedy. And I think with... now with the passing of time and the distance we have on it since it was first made... I think people are now... it was so revolutionary when it came out - in the look and all the rest of it - that I think that the comedic parts of it were completely forgotten. Because I thought I was doing a comedy, however black it was - and of course it was black... and nobody seemed to pick up on this at the time. Now, if you see it with an audience now, they roar with laughter. So I think that... that's I think what time has done.

PR: Yes.

I've seen quite a lot of your films... you're one of my favourite actors...

MM: Thank you.

Audience member: [partially inaudible] ...on that note I wanted to ask you whether or not... throughout your entire career, have you ever been in situations where you were negatively psychologically or emotionally affected by any of the roles you played, and if the answer is yes, which films were they.

PR: I don't know if you picked all that up, I'll just précis it. First of all the important part, Malcolm McDowell is one of this lady's... well she thinks he's one of the greatest living actors - of course she's absolutely right. But the question was whether he has been negatively psychologically affected by any of the roles that he's played and if so, what ones.

MM: The answer is no. Really. I mean no. It's all an illusion. Really. The worse the person I have to play, the more fun in a way. You can't... I had to play this serial killer in Russia, based on a real man who ate children. I was very depressed before I left. I think a lot to do with anticipation of the food I was going to eat in Russia but... [laughter] it was thoroughly... the whole subject - I thought 'Oh not again, why do I always get myself into this situation.' Anyway it was a great friend of mine who was directing it, I had no choice. I really decided... one thing I've never done in a performance before... I kind of constructed it completely, not using one ounce of myself. The whole look... it wasn't a make-up job, no false noses... but just a facial look, a walk, everything, speech pattern... was absolutely just made up because I did not want to take this horrible man home in any way. I can be doing silly walks... as they're saying 'turn over,' and as soon as they say 'Action' I can go on and do a great emotional scene, tears and all the rest of it, walk off and start doing silly walks again. Because that's what English actors do. It's acting.

I don't see too many... it's different... everybody... look, I don't care how somebody gets at the performance, that's up to them. I'm... thank God, I was brought up in the good old tradition of theatre in England. Starting in rep and going to one of these companies and all that and... so really my background is theatre. And theatre actors... if you can do a play, you can do a film for God's sake. That's for sure. So that really is... I don't take it too seriously. It's only acting. It's really basically really easy. We're not curing cancer - wish to God we were - we're not. And it's not rocket science. We're just interpreting what somebody else whose much cleverer than me, has written. I know there's a few writers here tonight so I hope they get a few scripts from that. [laughter] But no, that's... the truth is... and what have I learned through my experience - and I've been doing it an awful long time, I've done over 100 films so they tell me - thank God I haven't seen a lot of them... [laughter] the thing is really to enjoy yourself.

This Gangster No. 1, what a great fun thing, now that was my homage to Jimmy Cagney, right there, because you can't help but think of one of the greats that ever lived, that ever lived on celluloid was Jimmy Cagney. And there are so many great ones, of course, but for me he was just it. I'd go to see all his films... I see these joke things about who's the sexiest person in movies in the last 50 years, and I see Keira Knightley and I just throw up! [laughter] Not that she's not sexy and she's lovely, but for fuck's sake! Did anybody ever remember Ava Gardner for crying out loud? What the hell... what are these ridiculous... [applause] It's sort of an insult, really it's a joke. Listen, I think we should look to the traditions of what we do, it's a relatively new art form, and it is an art form - it is, making films is an art form, and Lindsay was very cognisant of that and wrote a lot of... well you know, Paul, you've got them in your book. Have we got time to plug your book? Never Apologise... do you want to get it, because actually it's pretty good. There you go. Right, put it down, that's enough. [laughter]

But seriously, we have to look back to these extraordinary people that came before us: actors, directors, writers, and it's a very important part... and I tell you, Lindsay Anderson taught me this. He'd quiz me: 'who is Jean Arthur, Malcolm? Name two films of Jean Arthur.' 'Umm... well I don't know the names of the films, Linds, but I know he was a comic...' 'No, Malcolm, it was a comedienne, she was a woman. Jean Arthur.' 'Oh, oh, oh, oh, that one...' I'm trying to busk it, but he's right, and he used to bring me here to see John Ford films and Kurosawa's films and Humphrey Jennings' films, and it's very important, if you're anybody in this business... these idiots in Hollywood have never even heard of Lindsay Anderson. They haven't even heard of somebody that's out of favour a month, believe me. It's so shocking, really, to me, because everything that we... the boundaries that are pushed today comes from before. You think it hasn't been done? I mean come on! See some of these John Ford films, they are beyond spectacular. And it makes me laugh really that... and I think Lindsay used to say about Ford 'he's a great, great director, Malcolm.' And I'd say 'what makes... what sets him apart from the rest.' He'd say 'well there are a lot of great directors, but there are very few poets, and John Ford was a poet,' and so was Lindsay, I think.

PR: Indeed, so was Lindsay. Okay we'll have this one first.

Audience member: Have you ever felt out of favour?

MM: I am always out of favour! You're looking at... I am out of favour right now. You're looking at out-of-favour. If there's out-of-favour in the dictionary, you're looking at it. [laughter] Thank God! [laughter and applause]

PR: Yes.

Stanley Kubrick

Audience member: The relationship you had with Lindsay Anderson lasted the rest of Lindsay's life. What about Kubrick? I thought that your relationship broke down after A Clockwork Orange...

MM: Of course, they're both great directors, and for very, very different reasons. Of course Kubrick was a master, no question about it, you see his films and not only was he a master at making extraordinary films of the time, but they were also successful. And that is an extraordinary feat. You can make commercial films that are crap - we see them all the time, but to make a film that... actually where you get something from it or you have to think or it elevates or something is very rare, and Kubrick was an extraordinary intellect. He wasn't a humanist, however, he didn't really like actors - he hated them actually - he was very, very suspicious of them - of us. No I won't put myself in that because I had won his trust, and I know that he trusted me and I had an extraordinary relationship with him. I expected my relationship with Stanley Kubrick to be similar - but different, of course - to Lindsay Anderson, and it was a big wake-up call when, as soon as the film was over, I never heard another word from him. And when you give someone... like... your life, everything that you have, and you suddenly get rejected... now that's me talking as a young man, in my 20s, a rejection like that... it's very difficult to get over.

I was too young to understand, perhaps. I thought that all these great directors were going to be as nice as Lindsay Anderson. Well they weren't, and why should Kubrick... anyway, why should he? He's his own thing and I think that he felt that I got too close to him on the film. We got very, very close, and I just think that I got too close for comfort for him, maybe, and it scared him a bit. That's my theory anyway. He'd probably say something else if he was here, but he's not. So you'll have to do with mine. This is a thing that you have to learn quite quickly when you start doing films and you're doing great films - I was very, very fortunate. I was the chosen one of the moment, and believe you me that moment is soon over. But still enjoy it, and I did - I loved it, but the thing is this, that you work very hard on a film and you come together like this with the whole unit, and especially your director, or your co-star or whatever it is, and you fall in love with them. In a way it's like being with a mistress, or it's like... whatever it is, you're in your own world for that short time, which is extraordinary, where you are totally vulnerable. You're giving everything, warts and all, and you're very susceptible, I'd say.

Now I've learned, I know that this is going to be a very temporary thing. And as soon as the last shot is over, I start the next film. So that all these people I've been so close to, I probably won't see them again. Or maybe I'll see them down the line and we'll give it... 'oh my god, do you remember...' 'yes, I remember, oh my god, yes...' It's like that, so now I know to protect myself really, that... not to give everything I have, that you always hold back something, and I think with Stanley, I didn't, I was very hurt by him, I don't blame him now - I did at the time, I hated him. It was like I hated the film, I hated him. But that was really unfortunate because it's a great film, and I think I'm very good in it. I loved it so much. When I was working with him, it was one of the most incredible things of my life, and I remember getting a telegram from Lindsay, from New York - he'd just seen the film - and it was quite amusing because he said 'HAVE SEEN CLOCKWORK STOP YOUR PERFORMANCE MARVELLOUS STOP DO NOT QUITE UNDERSTAND THE FILM.' [laughter]

Actually it was Lindsay who gave me the key to playing the part of Alex, because I was panicking a bit, and I didn't really know how to play this part, and... of course I knew 'yes, he's a thug' and all that and I could do all that, the physical stuff, but really, deep down, there was very little really to grasp hold of, and... anyway I called him up and I said 'would you mind reading the script and letting me know,' and he said 'no, bring it round, I'll read it, of course.' And he did, and I went over to see him and he said - first thing he said was 'thank God, Malcolm, I don't have to shoot this.' [laughter] I said 'look, never mind that, Stanley has all that taken care of. He's very good at all that, Linds. That's a whole different are than...' 'yes, I suppose it is,' he'd say. 'I mean, you couldn't really do 2001 [2001: A Space Odyssey, 1968], could you?' 'No, I couldn't. That was a good film.' He took me to see 2001, by the way. Anyway, he said 'Malcolm, this is how you play the part: there is a scene of you, a close-up in If...., where you open the doors to the gymnasium, to be beaten. You get a close-up.' I said 'that's right.' He said 'do you remember...' I said 'yes. I smiled.' He said 'that's right. You gave them that smile. That sort of ironic smile,' he said 'and that's how you play Alex.' And I went 'my god, that's brilliant. That's brilliant.'

That's all I needed and that was enough, and that is a brilliant piece of direction for an actor. It's very simple, it's totally visual and it's easy to hang on to. And instead of, you know, 'you come in and you hit that mark, then you turn around...' forget it. All that kind of direction's all nonsense. That's the kind of thing... and it really took me through the first day of filming of the script... of Clockwork, and when I got through the first day, I was into it, I was off and running. I never thought about it again. But he'd given me the hook to hang my hat, and that's the mark of a great director, for me. Now I said to Stanley, 'oh, Stanley, um... is there anything about the character you'd like to tell me?' He looked at me and he went 'gee, Malc, you know, I'm not RADA.' [laughter] 'Really? I see.' 'That's why I hired you. That's what you've gotta do. You come up with something.' Well that's one way of doing it.

And the thing is it was nice, in a way. That's why I think he was brilliant with somebody like Peter Sellers, because Peter Sellers had given fifteen variations of the same thing, and do from A to Z of different characters, and it was brilliant. I said to him 'no wonder you like Peter Sellers,' because I'd do something and say 'mmm, can you do something else?' 'Yeah, okay - I can do it with a carrot up my arse - well how do you want me to do it?' [laughter] 'Yeah, sure, Stan, I'll do something else.' Well then I remember once I did, I thought, the most beautiful scene, where I came in to prison, the first time I'm into prison, and I stand to attention behind a white line and stuff, and I thought I really did that well, and he walked over to me, after the first rehearsal and said 'well geez, I can't shoot that.' I went 'really? Why?' He went 'it's so boring.' [laughter] I went 'oh really? Wow. That doesn't make me feel really good, Stan, to be told that I'm boring when I'm... are you sure it's boring?' 'Well let me see it again.' I do the same thing again. 'Yeah, that's boring.' [laughter] I said 'well let me tell you this. This is my reasoning. I've come off a high thing here... I stamp my thing and I'm acting up here... and I'm going from here to another high, up here, so I just figured I'd like to give the audience a pause to refresh.' He goes 'oh really? Why do you want to do that? Let's hit 'em with everything. Let's pummel 'em, pummel 'em.' I went 'um... I really think this is really going to work really well.' So we compromised and I pretty much did it the way I wanted to do it, and... I think it works, because nobody ever mentions it, so it's got to work, right? [laughter]

Hot property in America

PR: Yes, I've got one right at the back.

Audience member: You moved to America in the late 70s. Can you tell us a bit about making your first film there, Time after Time [Nicholas Meyer, 1979]?

MM: Yes, actually, I moved to the States because of that film, because I went to make that film in Hollywood. It's about H.G. Wells chasing Jack the Ripper through time, to modern-day San Francisco, and meeting a modern-day liberated woman. Now H.G. Wells was a great socialist, and... so when he actually met a liberated woman, it wasn't quite what he imagined. Anyway, it's a wonderful thriller. It was made by a man called Nicholas Meyer, and he wrote the script, he'd done The Seven-per-cent Solution before that. I was really pleased to be offered the part of H.G. Wells rather than Jack the Ripper, which I thought they were going to offer me - thank God they didn't do that - and they picked David Warner and I don't think it could have been played any better than David.

I loved doing that because it gave me a chance to play a whimsical character and to do whimsy is really quite tricky, and it was so much fun for me. Also, the other fun thing was that I fell in love - I broke the golden rule - fell in love with the leading lady thing - and you never do that, and if you do I always ends in disaster. Now I know that, I've seen it a million times, but, however, still, I fell in love with the leading lady, Mary Steenburgen, and we got married and had two children, and the reason I stayed in America, because we eventually got divorced after eight or nine years or whatever it was... I wanted to stay with my children. It wasn't the fact that it was America or that I wanted to leave England, it was the fact that I wanted to be a father to my children, and they were in America so that's where I was. And in a weird way I had to reinvent myself. I felt like Madonna. Reinventing myself in America, but it took a while, but it was worth it.

Audience member: What's your most favourite scene?

MM: In what?

Audience member: In which you've acted.

PR: Any scene?

MM: The next one. [laughter] To be honest with you, of course one loves to play a big... like Gangster No.1, to play a scene like that is fantastic. You go from up there... to up there, and it was so much fun playing that part, really, I had a great time, it was a great group of people, and in fact I honestly can't remember when I didn't work on a film with a great group of people. Because somehow... I think all the bad ones have been weeded out. By the time they get to make the film, whatever it is, whether it's in Russia or in Africa - I've made a few, I've made them all over the place - and I always seem to have a great time, but... favourite scenes, I don't know... sometimes just a... movies are about movement, and that's a very important thing to remember, and the way you move on screen is very important to how the character comes across. I've always been cognisant of that and tried to get that right if I could. Anyway, I don't know, I suppose my favourite scene would have to be the scene with Christine Noonan because that changed my life and it gave me the relationship I had with this great man, who was a dear friend and it was just a pleasure to have known him. It was amazing. And I took it all for granted. I thought it would last forever, like we all do.

PR: Yes, we have a question there at the front, yes.

Audience member: Would you care to comment on Figures in a Landscape [Joseph Losey, 1970].

MM: That was hard, only from the point of view of the physical thing of running, running, there was me and Bob Shaw, and if you're tied to Robert Shaw for four months... [laughter] he is a great man, Robert was a wonderful man, but four months... it was tough, but Joe Losey was a remarkable director actually, and I'm very, very glad that I did this. It was my second film after If.... I was totally green. I had no idea what I was doing. I know that this was this Barry England book... Figures in a Landscape was the hot property of the year, and every actor, every young actor in England wanted to play this part. At first it was going to be Peter O'Toole for the other one, and then he pulled put. The director that cast me was a very fine Hungarian called Peter Medak, who's gone on to make some really wonderful films. What's the one he made with Peter... Ruling Class [1971].

PR: Ruling Class, that's right, yes.

MM: Anyway, he's a fabulous director, and a very sweet man. He cast me in the movie and... because I was 'H-O-T,' as Lindsay would say, after If.... and I was the sort of flavour of the month. And we went off to Spain to do this film and it was quite extraordinary really, but it was one of those things that really... the script didn't really work, to be honest. Robert was rewriting the script and... it taught me much more, really, about film than - honestly - If.... because it taught me what not to do. And the pitfalls were very glaring. And I remember, I was great friends with Robert, we got on very well, until the producer called him in his suite in Granada in a hotel. And I was in the suite with him and I heard his conversation, which went something like 'oh yeah? Oh... yeah? So you've seem 'em... the dailies, eh? Oh... what do you mean, over-the-top? What do you mean? Ah fuck you, what do you know anyway? Eh? Oh yeah? Well who says we'll have to redo it? Oh. Well have you spoken to Joe? Eh? How was Malcolm? Oh was he?' [laughter] I saw this idiot after 25 years. His name was John Kohn. He's not with us any more, I'm afraid, but I said 'do you ever remember that call? I was sitting there, and from that moment on it was over.' He was very competitive... so he had it in his mind he wanted to do a Mifune performance - very large, maniacal, crazy. And so I literally took one step back and observed. And that was it. That was it. I didn't try and do anything else. I just watched him and listened to him and took a lot of shit on the way, but still...

PR: Well Malc, we've got to draw to a close now. We're going to go back to... you could go on for hours. We're going to go back to Lindsay to end. I'm afraid this clip that we're going to end with is on video, but when the film is shown it will be shown on film, and it's the epic, O Lucky Man! and it's the last sequence of O Lucky Man!... are you counting the house or what?

MM: No, I was just trying to see if Frankie was here, a friend of mine. Oh she is.

PR: There she is.

MM: Yes, thank you. Sorry about that.

PR: You carry on. [laughter] This is the last sequence from If....

MM: What's it from?

PR: If.... It's not from If...., it's from O Lucky Man!, of course it is. [laughter]

MM: This man has completely bamboozled himself.

PR: I have.

MM: But I'll tell you this: his book is really good. [laughter]

PR: Thank you, Malc... [applause] This is a scene of Lindsay as an actor, trying to out-act Malcolm McDowell and losing, but... or maybe equalling...

MM: I'll tell you this: he is fantastic in this scene. He really is, he's fantastic.

PR: It's a lovely sequence: Lindsay as the director, Malcolm reliving, poetically, the audition which launched his career, and then it's followed immediately by a song by Alan Price, called 'O Lucky Man!'

MM: And Helen's in it.

PR: Helen Mirren's in it. You'll see everybody. Helen Mirren, Rachel Roberts, Arthur Lowe, Peter Jeffrey, Graham Crowden - I don't think he danced, did he - in the last sequence?

MM: Maybe he didn't want to show up for that!

PR: I don't think he did, but anyway you'll see the cast dancing around. If you know the words to the song please do join in. [laughter]

MM: Don't, please. [laughter]

PR: He's heard you sing. Meanwhile, thank you very much for being here. Please come to all the films, and thank Malcolm McDowell. [applause]

Last Updated: Wednesday, 10-Oct-2007 13:57:29 BST